Arid August Morning
by flippist
Summary: A story told in drabbles, following Jem as he comes to realise his true heritage. 'Changeling,' the faerie in the mirror whispered, 'you were always so blind.' Complete.
1. Mirrors

**This will be a rather unusual drabble story written for a rather unusual AU of mine. There is a plot, just in a non-linear form.**** Hope you enjoy!**

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><p><em>1. Mirrors<em>

There was a faerie in the mirror. His face was lovely, achingly so, all shards of glass and hollowed-out cheekbones. His skin was incredibly pale; tinged with a faint blue, near indistinct but providing an ethereal shade not found in human complexion; and his irises were a silver that reflected the world back at itself, just as a mirror does. The fingers that reached towards me were unnaturally long at first glance, but soon I would see the additional joint that caused them to curl like seashells against the palm. The wings that sprouted from the shoulders were not the feathered ones of an angel, nor the diaphanous stained-glass of a butterfly, as books portrayed them. They were dead maple leaves, oversized and overturned, touched with frost, fluttering in the non-existent breeze.

_Changeling, _the faerie whispered. _Were you so blind that you never saw the sickness was not one of drugs, but of iron? That the medicine did nothing but give you a cheap buzz, accompanying an addiction that fey blood would only reject? Why did you never tell them that your hair was always the colour of ashes, and your eyes as whitened as a cadaver's? _

His lips stretched into a bitter smile.


	2. Concertos

_2. Concertos_

My coming to London was a call of arms. I like to think of the Seelie queen sitting, a general resplendent in a throne of thorns, wondering of the child left so far behind. The demon was her conscription letter, crafted to sway the stoniest of hearts, and the drug was the contrite letter home. _He is not yours any more, _it said. _We have taken our prince of ghosts. No chance, now. _There wasn't, either, not for the boy brought up on violin concertos and broken promises.

The glamour is my armour. Nowadays I find it amusing to tug it on and rip it to shreds. Look, there are the glassy eyes softening back into the shadows, the cheeks filling back into obscurity; and now hear the wings crackling as they are shrouded by air; more subtle, watch the brows darkening by a fraction, and the fingers curling, once again mundane. In this form I can walk along the river and hear the cadence of my cane on the cobblestones, or draw my bow across the strings without hearing the whine of the friction, the wails of the imperfections.

Yes, it is cathartic to grow a second skin and be myself, but it is better still to tear it away and be the changeling, to feel the numbing pain of being deaf to the symphonies, and to stand, impassive, against the general's laughter.


	3. Nights

_3. Nights_

It would be the sort of poetry not found in words if that night was not the most painful I had ever experienced; if that night was trumped by the night I told her I could not marry her, or the night when he asked her instead. But for now, I remember vividly the cat's eyes staring down at me, and _it's that boy addicted, addicted _but I was not, and _what is he doing here, why are you crying?_

Why was I crying? It was the agony, perhaps, of feeling the skin stretched over your shoulder blades splitting in two, of the bones in your fingers elongating with sickening cracks, and _it's a glamour it's a glamour no it's not it's a spell and it's fading, fading, a faerie spell, he's a faerie. _Or maybe I was crying because of the pride, the pride forged over seventeen years in a dying fire, the pride that I left behind on the steps as I was dragged into the house, and the pride that flew away with the London pigeons when the world ceased to exist but my screams did not.

I knew the enchantment that made me voiceless was not one of mercy, it was one of expediency, but at least then I could tell myself that I was fearless, and that my stomach did not churn when I woke and found a faerie, a faerie in the mirror.


	4. Kings

_4. Kings_

_I chose to fall,_ the warlock said. _I was king, once; king of outcasts, of all those pushed away. When your… brother came to me, speaking of a curse that meant he could not love, speaking of demons and sisters and death and everything in between, I thought I could rule again. I could not. But then you arrived on my doorstep, a Seelie __**prince **__of all things, begging for redemption, for a human glamour- I could capture that once more. I could wear the crown._

The tea he gave me that morning was as bitter as his tone. I was him again- the fey, the reality- and that me wanted everything that passed my lips to be saccharine and forgettable. I amused myself by watching clouds of sugar swirl among the dregs and by tapping disjointed rhythms on the table.

_A crown of thorns, _I said. _I thought I could triumph by being the pariah, by being kind and cruel to all I met. But mortals do not want contradictions. He won her by being cruel. I lost her by being kind. That is the nature of change._

_Change, _he said, feline pupils tapering, _there is no change for things like us, or for her. Learn that soon, little king, or your constancy will be the death of you. Have we reached an agreement?_

I put the mug on the floor beside me, laughed, and began tracing the damp halo imprinted on the desk.


	5. Walls

_5. Walls_

Faeries tell their tales with honesty, brutal, interminable honesty, and they thrive on that, thrive on the despairing looks that come with the realisation that _faeries can't lie, it must be true_. That is the greatest lie of all; and the question _where have you been these last three days, _even coming from the wide brown eyes of someone I love, someone I hate, can be dodged by _I came across some relatives I didn't know were in London; _because it is true, and I know it is true every time I close my eyes and see the fey keening as they watch me pass, the walls glowing and shifting and rising and falling with my chest. And when I say that _I wrote you a letter, did you get it_, that is true also, and I know it is true because it is in my pocket, crumpled and stained with summer wine, screaming at her _why did you let me let you go, _and _why do you love him better, _and _will you be crying on his shoulder when I am gone or will he be crying on yours. _

Sometimes there are the exemptions, those questions that cannot be avoided. When she asks me _do you want your necklace back, _I want to say yes, I want to be selfish and tell her she does not need it now, she is promised to someone else. But all I can say is _it is not my necklace any more,_ smile cordially, and pretend that the fey inside me is not basking in her pain as she walks away.


	6. Deadlines

_6. Deadlines_

Perhaps he realised, during training, that I was faster, stronger, _healthier_. But it was only when we came to the corridor that he pushed me up against the wall, hands in a choke-hold around my neck, and scrutinised me, looking for the weakness that made me his brother- if not in blood, then in spirit.

He could not find it. He backed away. _The connection,_ he said. _Gone._ _What did you do?_

_You had your turn,_ I said. _This time let me be the enigma. _

His eyes flashed black, and he turned and walked away, his movement creating a gust of air too artificially incensed to be real. He left me shuddering in his wake.

That night I saw the queen, walking through the institute followed by a cloud of sprites, lighting her like vindictive candle flames.

_What a wonderful little experiment you turned out to be, my son. The strongest spell I had ever cast, and it made you nephilim in all but ancestry. Now that the runes have burnt from your skin, held only in precarious glamour, you must join your court and your people. _

I was naïve to believe that I could escape escaping my old life. I was filled to the brim with dreams of recovery, miraculous and swift, my mortality held in place by charms and fortune.

_A deadline, _she said. _One year to say goodbye. And then you will belong to us. _

_I will belong to them, _I thought. _Faerie in ancestry only. _

_No escape, after all._


	7. Mornings

_7. Mornings_

It was an arid august morning, and the white cloths of the mourners were sullied with the loosened dirt. That day I was an 'old friend from back in Shanghai', and everyone else was 'the bereaved'. It suited the occasion, just as her tears suited the occasion, and his heartfelt speech suited the occasion, and the solemn lugubriousness of my manufactured body suited the occasion. I wonder if they would have laughed knowing they spent hours weeping over a glamoured mundane drug-addict picked off the London streets. When it was my turn to pay respects I threw a little extra downturn of the lips, covered an over sighted wrinkle, and paled the skin into a more deathly hue.

I suppose that seeing themselves buried would have disturbed others. To me it was a relief, a final shutting off of my old ways, and a chance to laugh at the finiteness of my old body. So easily discarded. Even wizened Mr Chang, a construct as real as the rare imported teas he supposedly sold, fit me better.

In the end, as I watched her staining his shoulders with tears, I fingered the jade necklace I had appropriated from her discarded jacket, and pondered why she did not give it up.

_Better move on soon, _I hissed into her ear as I departed, Chang's voice gravelly and blasé, _immortality leaves little time for reminiscence. _


	8. Ends

_The water of the Thames is incarnadine in the sunset/ I spent my whole life thinking about dying and now I know that will never happen/ the heat wave makes the wind shudder/ everyone we know will be gone/ it stinks of sludge and sweat and city/ but maybe one day_

_when she is lonely too_

_I can come back for her_

_we will be lonely together_

_and although she may not be able to forget_

_she will have forever_

_to remember_

_Who am I/ I have no face to keep/ am I ever in one place_

_No_

_On an arid, august morning I realised that._


End file.
